


I promise falling for me won't be a mistake

by StrikerEureka



Series: I've really got my heart out on my sleeve [1]
Category: Hamilton - Miranda
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Daddy Issues, M/M, Rimming, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-23
Updated: 2016-06-23
Packaged: 2018-07-16 18:31:02
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,487
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7279279
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/StrikerEureka/pseuds/StrikerEureka
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lafayette came to New York to model professionally, instead, he modeled nude for visual arts students, and met a sweet southern boy with a temper.</p><p> </p><p>  <i>Walking around the classroom, barefooted and wrapped in a blanket, he observed his likeness from every conceivable angle. He offered his praise to only one of them, a short, freckled boy with wild curls in a haphazard bun, and a sweet, low voice. His proportions were off on the arms but Lafayette gave his compliments on the accurate rendering of his dick.</i></p><p>  <i>The boy blushed wildly and stammered out a cranky excuse of being a law student, not an artist, and Lafayette was charmed instantly and irreparably. </i></p><p>  <i>Lafayette didn’t lose his soul to the city but he lost everything, all at once, to John Laurens.</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	I promise falling for me won't be a mistake

**Author's Note:**

> John's relationship with his father is strained, as Henry is still coming to terms with his son being gay. John hasn't developed healthy coping mechanisms for this. If that might be a sensitive issue for you, you may way to take a pass on this.

Lafayette’s father was the French ambassador to America when he was a child, and his mother a socialite, but he has only the vaguest memories of his parents (his mother bandaging his knee when he fell off his first bicycle, his father teaching him how to swim). They died in a car accident when he was six years old and he remembers more clearly than any event of his childhood, the way the grass in the cemetery smelled, the folded French flag he was handed, the way that his grandmother took his hand when he started to cry. 

They left him a fortune. As an only child, he hadn’t had to think to share it with siblings, and his grandmother passed away when he was only sixteen, leaving him well and truly alone in the world. He had no one to care for, no one to lavish attention and tokens of affection on. 

He tried his hand at politics for a semester at university, but it didn’t agree with him. Dishonesty had never been a trait he had admired and the task of lying day in and day out, schmoozing for favors, and turning himself into a person that he dislikes didn’t appeal and he dropped out. 

Lafayette picked up modeling when a former fling suggested it to him, gave him her agent’s number, and he thought, _cur non?_

He did well for himself, carving out a little niche all his own, gracing the covers of a few magazines in France and Scandinavia, tossing his jacket over his shoulder at the end of runways. His number of twitter and instagram followers earned him a _verified_ checkmark, it got him into clubs, it got him laid. It passed the time, it was fun, and he was still alone. 

When he was twenty, he received a call from a modeling agency in Manhattan that wanted to fly him out for an audition (a mere formality, they assured him). Lafayette applied for a work visa and boarded a plane across the pond for the first time in his life. 

When the morning of his audition rolled around, Lafayette had stood on the street corner across from the building and stared at the revolving door, watching it rotate over and over and over. His phone buzzed in his pocket with a reminder that his appointment was in ten minutes. When he silenced the alarm, he took one last look at the building and walked away.

A week later, he began posing nude for visual arts students at Columbia. 

Walking around the classroom, barefooted and wrapped in a blanket, he observed his likeness from every conceivable angle. He offered his praise to only one of them, a short, freckled boy with wild curls in a haphazard bun, and a sweet, low voice. His proportions were off on the arms but Lafayette gave his compliments on the accurate rendering of his dick.

The boy blushed wildly and stammered out a cranky excuse of being a law student, not an artist, and Lafayette was charmed instantly and irreparably. 

Lafayette didn’t lose his soul to the city but he lost everything, all at once, to John Laurens.

 

\--

 

“What exactly is a Marquis?” John asks him later that same day over a shared Belgian waffle covered in strawberries and dripping chocolate down their fingers as they pick at it.

“A title I inherited from my father and he from his and so on back to generations where that meant something,” Lafayette tells him, picking a strawberry half from a mound of whipped cream and eating it in one bite.

John is watching his mouth as he sucks his thumb clean and Lafayette would be lying if he said he didn’t play it up a little on purpose. 

John clears his throat and turns his attention back to the waffle, tearing off another bite. “So you’re, what? Royalty?”

“Nobility. Technically. It means nothing, really,” Lafayette says with a shrug. “Tell me though, John, is it your habit to google your dates before you accept them?”

There’s a flush on John’s cheeks that makes his over abundance of freckles stand out starkly against his skin; it’s very becoming. “I didn’t google. I searched twitter.”

“And you like what you see, then?” Lafayette asks, wiggling his eyebrows. John rolls his eyes but his lips purse up like he’s trying, and failing, not to smile.

“The shirtless avatar was promising.”

“The what?”

“Your picture. The default one.”

“Oh, yes!” Lafayette laughs, dragging his finger through the whipped cream, melting from the heat of the waffle, and sticking it in his mouth. “I was on the beach. Cannes. Very lovely.”

John takes a breath and lets it out slowly, fingers picking at the edge of the cardboard holder in his hands. “Look, Gilbert—“

“Gil, if you want.”

“Gil. I’m not really…”

When he trails off, Lafayette feels his entire body deflate. He hasn’t made many friends yet, since coming to the States, and none so lovely as this second year law student who chased after a moving waffle truck for him, so he could try his first New York City street food. 

“You don’t need to let me off easy,” he says, smiling even though he doesn’t much feel it. The ache to get on a plane back home is throbbing in his gut like a physical wound. 

John continues to stare at the waffle he’s holding between them, for a moment longer, and then looks up, squinting against the sun peeking between the buildings above. 

“Let you down.”

“What?” Lafayette asks, eyebrows drawing down in confusion.

“Let you down easy. Not off.”

Lafayette rolls his eyes skyward. “It is not nice to correct a foreigner’s English. I am trying my best, you know.”

“I didn’t—I didn’t mean,” John cuts himself off. “I’m sorry. Look, Gil,” he starts again, and Lafayette meets his gaze once again. “You seem like a really, genuinely nice guy. And I’m not good at… being good,” he finally seems to settle on.

“How do you mean, ‘being good’?” Lafayette isn’t sure he understands the meaning.

“Just not good. For anyone.”

Lafayette touches his hand, takes his wrist in a gentle grip. “Can I not decide that for me?”

 

\--

 

John accepts when Lafayette asks him out, but he insists it be casual. Lafayette thinks he means where they go and how they dress, but when a group of John’s rambunctious friends meet them at the club John brought them to, he realizes that this is probably not quite a date.

Two of John’s friends stand out, a short, loud-mouthed paralegal with serious sleep circles under his eyes, and a modest mountain of a man with a brilliant smile and rough hands. Alexander and Hercules, respectively. There is a pair of sisters in their group, but John pays them no mind, and Lafayette never does get either of their names. His attention is on John, and the way every drink he consumes seems to set him more and more on edge.

“We can leave,” Lafayette shouts in his ear after John turns him down (again) when he asks to dance. He isn’t interested in sitting in a booth, watching John get progressively more drunk. Something is off, but he doesn’t know what, and John isn’t trying to tell him.

He sits patiently through two more songs, watching as John and Alexander match one another in four rounds of shots, before he takes the hint he’s being handed and excuses himself. Hercules gives him a sympathetic look, but doesn’t say a word.

He half hopes that John will stop him, ask him not to go, but the other half of him is telling himself to be relieved. Any attachments here will make it more painful when his visa expires.

The subway requires too much concentration for him to get lost in his head, but once he unlocks the door to his apartment, he wants to collapse into bed and never move again. He wants to call home, hear another French voice, but there is no one to there to pick up. He falls asleep with damp eyes and dreams about his grandmother.

 

\--

 

He doesn’t expect to hear from John again, let alone the following morning. There is a moment when Lafayette holds his phone in his hand and considers muting the ringer and ignoring it altogether. He knows, inherently, that John is trouble. But, god help him, he thinks if he can get John to be honest with him, that it might just be worth it.

He slides his thumb across the screen and brings his phone to his ear. “Hello?”

There is a moment of silence wherein Lafayette wonders if it’s still possible to accidentally dial someone from your pocket. Then, “Gilbert. Hi. Wasn’t sure you’d answer.”

“I nearly did not,” he says, turning his attention back to the contents of his refrigerator; he really needs to have groceries delivered again.

Another breath of hesitation. “Can we meet? And talk? Are you hungry? Let me buy you breakfast. Or coffee. Or… anything.”

Lafayette stands in silence, shirtless, in front of his refrigerator, letting the cold air prick his skin with goosebumps, for long enough that John sighs quietly into his ear and says, “please.”

He scans the shelves once more before he lets the door close and says, “You are lucky I am hungry.”

 

\--

 

It’s not until he is on the train up to West Village, where John has asked to meet him for brunch, that Lafayette lets himself think about how odd this situation is. He has only known John for a few days, not even an entire week, and already John feels as though he has something that he needs to explain to Lafayette about himself. He’s already apologizing to him.

He’ll be ashamed later that he stands on the sidewalk, after he emerges from the underground, and thinks seriously about heading back down the steps and getting on a train back home. But he doesn’t. He heads to the restaurant that John had indicated and sees him there, one moment checking his phone, and the next glancing up the street one way, before looking the other, leaning up on his toes in a vain attempt to see over the heads of passersby.

When Lafayette catches his eye, John smiles at him and stuffs his phone into the back pocket of his jeans. He looks tired and queasy, like possibly he’d vomited when he woke up this morning, his hair pulled back into a messy bun that looks more sloppy than purposefully disheveled. But still, Lafayette can’t deny that he’s happy to see him again, even after last night.

“You came,” John says, his voice sounding like someone has dragged his vocal cords behind their car for a few miles.

“I said I would.”

John nods and indicates the open door where a pretty girl stands behind a hostess podium. Lafayette follows and John gives his name; they’re seated immediately. The room is overly air-conditioned and Lafayette rubs at his arms for a moment after they’re seated. 

“Are you cold?” John asks. “We can sit outside, if you want.” He lifts his hand to flag someone down, but Lafayette shakes his head.

“Non, John, this is fine.”

Lafayette gives the menu a cursory glance and spends the next couple of minutes studying John. His complexion is washed out, even his freckles looking pale, and his eyelids swollen like maybe he’d cried last night. He sniffs every few moments, as though he’s recently overcome a cold, and his fingers fidget restlessly with his cutlery, making them click together inside the cloth napkin that they’re rolled up in.

Lafayette thinks back to the other day, the becoming flush of his cheeks and the way he’d stammered out a defense of his drawing, and reminds himself that this is the same man he wants a chance with. He waits for John to set his menu aside, but he keeps himself busy with it until someone appears to take their order.

The waitress looks between the two of them, smiling with perfect teeth. Lafayette orders a coffee and a pastry, and John orders like a man being given his last meal.

“I’ve never been hungover and so hungry,” Lafayette says, not unkindly, once the waitress has walked away.

“Hungover and anxious, really,” John says, finally looking up at him. Lafayette tilts his head and John rubs at his face. “Look, Laf—Gil, you seem like a really nice guy.”

“I feel as though we’ve lived this moment before,” Lafayette interrupts. 

“Please,” John says, voice still rough in his throat, “just let me…” he trails off and changes tack. “I fought with my father on the phone before we met up last night.” Lafayette nods when the silence seems to indicate that he needs some sort of response. John’s gaze returns to his silverware. “He’s…”

“A conservative senator from your home state, I know this.”

John looks up at him with raised eyebrows. “Did you google _me_?” he asks with a small grin.

“After the waffle truck, yes. You gave me the idea.”

John tries and fails to tuck a tightly wound curl behind his ear, twice. “We have differing opinions on almost everything. He’s come around a lot on me being gay and out, but… he gets under my skin. Easily. Last night he brought up some girl he wants me to take out. I told him I had a date with a guy I’d drawn naked in class, and it went downhill pretty fast from there.”

The waitress returns with their drinks and Lafayette accepts his with thanks, holding the steaming mug between his hands. He tries to choose his words both carefully and correctly. “You used me to make your father angry?”

“ _No_ ,” John stresses instantly. “Well, maybe a little, but…” he sighs and pulls his hair free of its tie so he can rake his fingers through it. His curls hang to his shoulders and fall around his cheeks until he bats them back. “I do like you,” John tells him, leaning against his forearms on the tabletop. “I want to get to know you, if I can, but my father is going to hate you, no matter what, and I guess I need you to know that. Beforehand.”

John’s hand is extended on the table, like he wants to reach for one of Lafayette’s, but he doesn’t move. 

Lafayette stares down at his cooling coffee. He doesn’t really know John, but he wants to. This could go absolutely nowhere, and this drama with John’s father could be for nothing, or this could be something fantastic for the both of them. He doesn’t know, but he thinks John could be worth the trouble to find out. He lets go of his mug with one hand and rests it over top of John’s.

“I will have you know,” he says loftily, “that it is impossible to hate me. No matter what the circumstances.”

John’s face melts into a tired, but relieved smile, and he turns his hand to squeeze Lafayette’s wrist. Neither of them moves away until the waitress returns with their food.

 

\--

 

The first time Lafayette takes John out, proper, it’s to a different club; none of John’s friends show up this time. Lafayette buys him drinks and John kisses him after the second one, grinding against his thigh on the dance floor. His lips taste like rum and his hands grip hard at Lafayette’s hips; John kisses like he has something to prove and he’s making his case in the expert slide of his tongue in Lafayette’s mouth.

He touches John, after their fourth drink, sliding his hand between them to cup and rub the evident bulge in his jeans. John clings to him and pants against his neck. They’re barely moving and going to get caught out, so he turns John by the hips and presses against his back. John curves against him, hooking his arm up over Lafayette’s shoulder to grip his neck, and Lafayette rocks them to the beat.

He mouths at John’s neck and whispers something filthy in his ear. He doesn’t expect to be heard over the music, or his French to be understood, but John turns his head, tipping back to meet Lafayette’s gaze and nods. 

_Take me home and I will show you what my mouth can do,_ John tells him in flawless French. 

Lafayette hails a cab home because he doesn’t think he could keep his hands to himself enough to remain decent on public transit. As it is, in the dark of the cab, John slumps against his side, looking for all the world like someone ready to collapse after a night of drinking. He keeps his hand between Lafayette’s legs, squeezing and rubbing at the length of his cock, trapped against his thigh, until he’s leaking through his boxer-briefs and fighting to keep his breathing normal. 

John pays for the cab and Lafayette tries not to draw too much attention to himself, the way his jeans are pulled tight against his cock, when he climbs out onto the sidewalk. He’s satisfied to see that John is tenting his own jeans as he tucks his wallet away and follows Lafayette into his building.

Everything is a blur, once they step in the door. Their clothes are shed through the hallway, as Lafayette leads the way toward his bedroom. They stumble in the dark, rubbing together through their boxers, gripping and tugging at one another as they kiss, sloppy and wet. John is small but his body is tight, lightly muscled, his skin soft; he’s stronger than Lafayette had been expecting, able to manhandle him down onto his hands and knees on the bed. 

Lafayette isn’t drunk, but there’s a pleasant buzz in his head that delays him just long enough that John is able to tug his boxer-briefs down his thighs before he realizes what is happening. He’d intended to lay John out and suck his cock until he cried, but John is fully in control here. He squeezes Lafayette’s ass cheeks in each hand and pulls them apart. It’s too dark in the room for either of them to see much, but John still groans; he leans in and licks Lafayette’s hole without hesitation.

“Fuck,” Lafayette breathes, jerking away from the touch. “John, you don’t have to—“

“I want to,” John tells him, licking him again and again, pulling back to spit on his hole, and then leaning in to fasten his mouth to it. 

Lafayette presses his forehead to the crook of his arm and closes his eyes. “Jesus christ, John,” he breathes.

John works him relentlessly, pushing against him with his tongue until Lafayette relaxes enough to allow it inside of him. He’s never liked this without warning, without knowing that he’s cleaned himself well enough for his partner, but John is moaning against him like he loves it. His hands slide down Lafayette’s thighs and back up, squeezing and rubbing at the tensed muscles as he tongues at his hole; spit slicks his crack, all the way down to his balls, and Lafayette shudders at the feel of cold air on his damp skin whenever John leans back for a breath.

“Can you come from this?” John asks, kissing and biting at one of his cheeks, squeezing the other; he pulls them apart, again, and brings a spit-slick finger to his hole. 

“I don’t know,” Lafayette rasps. “Fuck, John, please, do something. I cannot take this.” His cock is so hard, his foreskin so tight where it’s pulled back to expose his leaking head, that it’s beginning to ache on the side of real pain.

“Do you wanna fuck me?”

Lafayette lifts his head and looks back over his shoulder. John’s face is wet from his own saliva and a few of his curls are sticking out, free from his hair tie. He wants to see more, wants to see the flush on him, the freckles he knows are scattered across his body, the way his own come looks on his skin. 

“Do you want that?” Lafayette asks. John nods and Lafayette pushes himself up to his knees. “Get naked,” he instructs. John flops back against his pillows and shoves his boxers down his legs, kicking them off the bed, while Lafayette clicks on the bedside light and roots around for the lone condom he’s sure is in the drawer. 

“Do you have something?” John asks. “I’ve got a condom in my wallet.”

“No, here,” Lafayette says finally, sitting back on his heels to check the expiration date; he hasn’t had sex since he came to this country and he hasn’t had a reason to restock what he brought with him. 

John brings his knees up, planting his feet on the bed, and he touches himself with both hands. “Gil, hurry,” he murmurs. “I’m so hard, please.”

“I know, love,” Lafayette assures him, tearing open the wrapper and rolling the condom down his cock. “Just let me…” he trails off, grabbing the bottle of lube he keeps on the floor between his nightstand and bed, and crawls between John’s legs, which spread wider to accommodate him.

Lafayette bats his hands away and scoots up closer. “Hold your legs for me,” he instructs and John takes hold of both of his knees. Lafayette opens him up quickly, but carefully, stretching him with expert care and a generous amount of lubricant. John’s eyes close and he relaxes into the touch, mouth open as he pants softly.

Quiet, _oh_ s escape him every other breath, and he bites his lip, fingers flexing against his own skin. Lafayette watches his own fingers, sliding in and out of John’s hole, before his gaze wanders to John’s dick. It’s short but thick, circumcised, but still entirely lovely; the fat head of it is slick with his own precome, and the skin is scattered with freckles. Lafayette’s mouth waters at the sight and his ass clenches around nothing. 

He slips his fingers out and slicks his own cock when John’s sounds grow impatient. 

“How do you want this, love?” Lafayette asks.

“Oh, fuck,” John breathes, opening his eyes to look down at Lafayette, still kneeling between his thighs. “Like this, to start. Is that all right?”

Lafayette nudges in, snubbing the head of his cock over John’s hole. It clenches and loosens and Lafayette does it again, holding his cock in one hand and John’s leg aloft with the other; he doesn’t press in, though, just rubs hard enough that John can feel it.

“Laf, _please_ ,” John gasps, setting his other foot on Lafayette’s shoulder and planting his hands against the wall above the short headboard to push down.

“Again, John, in French this time,” he rasps, holding the head of his dick to John’s hole and going still.

John sobs out a ragged, frustrated breath. “ _Please! Gil, please, I need it. I need you so bad. Don’t you want to? Don’t you want to fuck me?_ ”

Lafayette presses forward until the head of his cock sinks in, and John’s groan is loud and unabashed. “ _You like that?_ ”

“ _I’d like it more if you’d_ fuck _me_ ,” John snaps, arms straining, his muscles pulled taught as he holds himself still. 

Lafayette doesn’t need for John to beg him again; he didn’t need it in the first place, but he gets the feeling that maybe John did. He sinks in in steady thrusts, pulling back and adding more lube as the strain gets harder, but John keeps moaning and gasping until Lafayette has sunk fully inside of him. He lets go of John’s leg and pushes the other off his shoulder so that he can press himself to John’s chest and kiss him.

“Is this what you wanted, John?” Lafayette asks, biting at his open lips.

John nods, leaning up to kiss Lafayette hard as he starts to thrust. Arms wind around his neck and keep him close; John panting into his neck as his hips pick up speed. John’s legs spread wide before pulling tight against his sides, holding on as Lafayette’s hips start smacking against his own.

“Oh, fuck,” John breathes, gasping as his fingernails claw into the skin of Lafayette’s back. “Oh my god.”

“Do you want to turn over?” Lafayette asks, bracing himself on his elbows. “I can fuck you harder if you get to your knees.” 

John nods, and Lafayette holds the condom on his dick as he pulls out. John lies there, just a breath, shuddering, before he twists himself around and spreads his knees on either side of Lafayette, ass up, and head down. He has his eyes closed when Lafayette guides his cock back to his hole, sinking in smoothly on a single thrust, and then he’s fucking him again, harder and faster than before. 

John rocks with it, pushing the pillows away so he can fist his hands in the fitted sheet and brace himself with his elbows. He rocks back for it, cries out for it, swears and gasps, and Lafayette doesn’t think he’s ever seen anything so beautiful in his life. 

“Gil, christ, can you touch me? Jesus, _please_ ,” he says, wincing when Lafayette fucks him even harder. 

John has to brace himself to keep his head from hitting the wall when Lafayette leans against his back, letting John’s shaking arms hold their combined weight. “Beg me, John.”

“Jacky… call me—please, just—“

“Jacky,” Lafayette moans in his ear, without question, and John shudders so hard that Lafayette regains his balance so that they don’t collapse. “Such a good boy, for me,” Lafayette praises, pulling out entirely just to hear him whine. He pushes in again and pulls out, over and over until John is whimpering.

“Please,” John whispers. “Touch me. Please, Gil. Please.”

Lafayette doesn’t tell him to touch himself, knows that John would do that if he really wanted to get himself off, but he hasn’t made a move toward his own dick since they started. 

“ _Wait for me,_ ” Lafayette says, picking up the pace again, his balls starting to draw up as the tension in his belly becomes too great to ignore. “ _Get me off, Jacky, and I will suck you until you come down my throat._ ”

John’s cry is explosive, and his hole tightens unbearably, but he starts rocking his hips, fucking himself back on Lafayette’s cock, until he’s the only one of them moving. Lafayette watches the play of his muscles through his back, the way his ass cheeks clench, the tension in his forearms as he braces himself against the headboard and shoves back. Lafayette bites his lip and digs his fingers into John’s hips, and comes so hard that it steals his breath away.

Lafayette pulls out before he goes too soft, and ties off the condom; his knees are weak as he stumbles off the bed to the trashcan in the bathroom, but he makes it without running into anything. John is on his back, knees drawn up, hands over his face, while his chest heaves and his cock twitches against his belly. It’s straining, almost purple with blood, and leaking onto his skin.

He’s gorgeous. 

Lafayette crawls up the bed between his legs and settles himself there without hesitation. John keeps an arm over his eyes as Lafayette lifts his cock and swallows it down. It’s not terribly difficult to take him into his throat, and Lafayette’s lips and nose press into John’s neatly trimmed pubic hair without much trouble.

“Oh my god,” John whispers, holding himself carefully still, like he doesn’t want to thrust up, doesn’t want to choke Lafayette with it. 

Lafayette pulls off and takes a ragged breath, swallowing the excess of saliva in his mouth and the taste of John’s precome. He doesn’t speak, because John seems at the edge already, so Lafayette just swallows him down again, sucking and bobbing his head until John’s breathing goes erratic and a hand fists suddenly in his hair. 

“Gilbert,” John says, voice tight and bordering on a whine. “You—you don’t have to…”

Lafayette draws himself up to suck at the head, stroking the rest of his cock in a tight fist, until John is choking on an inhale and arching up, coming in several thick spurts over his tongue. There’s a lot of it, more than Lafayette had anticipated, but he swallows it down, keeps sucking until John’s sounds turn just this side of frantic, and he eases off.

He leaves a trail of kisses up John’s belly, over clenching muscles, until he’s kissing lightly at his lips, in case John doesn’t like the taste of himself; John takes hold of his head and pushes his tongue into his mouth. They kiss, messy and awful, until they’re both out of breath and panting from it.

John presses against his chest, his arms curled up between them and his head tucked under Lafayette’s jaw, and Lafayette fumbles a blanket up over them (with the help of his foot), before pulling John close with both arms. John falls asleep almost immediately, but Lafayette lies awake, watching the minutes change on his bedside clock for almost an hour before his own eyelids start to droop.

He’s afraid that when he wakes up, John will be gone. His last thought, before he drifts off to sleep, is that this has been an incredibly odd week for him.

 

\--

 

John is there in the morning. And the next morning. He goes home Sunday night, after spending a considerable amount of time kissing Lafayette goodbye just inside the doorway.

“I’m tempted to skip my morning lecture,” John murmurs when Lafayette ducks his head to kiss along his neck. 

“You may as well go,” Lafayette mumbles between kisses to his heated skin. “I pose for a first year figure drawing class tomorrow at ten.”

John’s fingers tighten in his hair and draw his head back. For a moment, Lafayette is afraid that John is going to ask him to quit posing nude, but instead he narrows his eyes and shakes his head slightly. “If you pick up anyone else who draws your dick really well, I’ll push them into traffic.”

Lafayette snorts and kisses John’s forehead, letting it linger. “You are wicked.”

“You don’t know the half of it,” John assures him.

Lafayette gives him one final kiss on the mouth before he reaches for the door handle. “I think you only try to be.”

He waits until the elevator closes behind John before he goes back inside; he leans against his door and closes his eyes. His grandmother used to tell him that his parents had a whirlwind romance, met in school, married young, and died too soon (even that they did together, though it wasn’t by design). They burned fast and bright, and while Lafayette doesn’t feel reckless himself, he gets the feeling that John just might be. 

This is either the beginning of a whirlwind of his own, or a hurricane of John’s.

 

\--

 

It’s not long after they start seeing one another that Lafayette understands that John is a storm all on his own. He is the sweet, soft-spoken boy, who tries to swallow his southern accent, that Lafayette initially swooned for over a waffle on the sidewalk on the upper west side. But he’s also the jealous guy who glowers at any of the arts students who smile at Lafayette outside of class. He argues with his friends when they say anything he doesn’t agree with, and he fights with his father on the phone until he cries. He’s shattered the screen on his phone, twice since they met, after hurling it at the wall, mid-dispute, and broken and replaced Lafayette’s favorite coffee mug after another call from his father.

The temper Lafayette understands, to a point. He never had a father to fight with, and he can’t imagine not being accepted at face value by him. John has been made combative after years of competition with his brothers, the loss of his mother, and not living up to what his father expects him to be.

It’s when he’s sitting on the counter, tear tracks drying on his cheeks, and Lafayette picking ceramic shards out of his finger with a pair of tweezers, that he says, not without self-deprecation, “I’m always like this. In case you were wondering.”

Lafayette digs a fine shard out and sets it on the bloody paper towel with the others. He glances up at John and nudges his glasses further up his nose with the back of his hand. 

“Sensitive?” Lafayette asks.

“Don’t mock me,” John says, but it lacks any anger; it’s saturated with resignation.

“I would not.” He ducks his head again and turns John’s hand this way and that. “I think I’ve gotten it all. Wash your hands.”

Lafayette moves and John slides to his feet, moving toward the sink while Lafayette cleans up the mess on the counter. He tosses the large chunks of his new mug into the trash and folds up the smaller bits in paper towel and seals them in a plastic bag before tossing them too.

John looks embarrassed and tired, avoiding Lafayette’s gaze as he finishes treating John’s finger with a band-aid and a gentle kiss on top of it.

“I’ll buy you another mug,” he mumbles, looking down at his own feet. 

“I would prefer it if you just stopped breaking them altogether.”

John sighs and rubs at his eyes. “I know. I’m sorry.” Lafayette folds him into a hug and John buries his face in his chest. “He _knows_ he’s hurting me, and he does it anyway. He tells me about these girls, and my brothers’ girlfriends, and how his reelection is coming up and how he wants me to lay low.” John’s voice goes tight at the end and Lafayette squeezes the back of his neck, resting his chin on the top of his head.

“There is nothing wrong with you, mon cher,” Lafayette tells him gently.

John makes a frustrated sound and presses his forehead so hard against his sternum that it hurts. Still, he holds John there and doesn’t ask him to ease up. He doesn’t know this pain, but he will hold John through it.

 

\--

 

Summer waits until July to really make itself known, but once it dawns, it’s hot and humid and terrible, and Lafayette is so thankful for the shade that the trees in the park offer, that he wants to plant a hundred more himself. John is leaning back against the trunk of one and Lafayette has his head in his lap, John’s fingers in his sweaty hair. It’s too hot to move but John seems to function just fine.

“It never gets this hot back home,” Lafayette grumbles.

“We know,” Alexander says. He’s lying on his stomach, on a blanket, with a book open in front of him. “This ain’t France, you bougie—“

“Alex,” John cuts him off. “Shut it or I’ll fight you right here.”

“Bring it,” Alexander says with no real heat, turning the page in his book.

Lafayette stretches his arms over his head and grins up at John, who glances away from the paperback in his hand to look down at him; or more accurately, he looks down at the exposed skin of his belly.

“You would fight your best friend for me?” Lafayette asks, wiggling his eyebrows.

“He’d lose.”

“Shut up, Alex.”

Lafayette grins and closes his eyes when John’s fingers start combing through his curls again. 

“Y’all make me sick,” Alexander says, but Lafayette hears the shutter of his phone’s camera and he cracks his eye open again. 

“Send me that?” Lafayette asks. 

Alexander doesn’t say a word, but a moment later, Lafayette’s phone buzzes in his pocket and he unlocks it to save the picture. He looks blissful, eyes shut and smiling, and John looks beautiful, hair up in a wild ball of curls, book in hand. He lies there silently for another minute before he unlocks his phone again and opens up instagram.

He captions it: _I think I like it here._ and adds the purple heart emoji, tagging John in it, before uploading it and tossing his phone beside him in the grass.

Lafayette drifts for a while, too hot to sleep, but too comfortable to move. He thinks about how it’s only been four months since they met, but he already wants John to move in with him. He wonders how John’s father would react, if it would keep John from saying yes. He fidgets restlessly after that, until John dogears his page and sets his book down.

“We can go back to your place, if you’re that hot,” John says, placing an overly-warm hand on his chest. 

Lafayette shrugs and covers John’s hand with his own. “Only when you want to.”

John digs in the pocket of his shorts for his phone and he goes still.

“What is it?” he asks.

“What did you do?”

Lafayette pushes himself up and leans over to look at the screen of John’s phone. There are endless follow request notifications from instagram.

“What? Are you angry?” he asks as John opens the app and looks at the picture. His face is tense and Lafayette leans in to press a kiss to the skin of his shoulder, exposed by his tank top. “Don’t be upset,” he murmurs.

It takes a moment but John replies quietly. “I’m not.”

John hits the comment option and leaves a double set of purple heart emojis before he locks his phone again. Lafayette kisses him. He only means for it to be brief, a reassurance, but John’s tongue touches his, and Lafayette will never say no to that. He kisses John until Alexander throws an empty water bottle at the back of his head. 

 

\--

 

They’re kissing lazily, making out on the couch in Lafayette’s living room, while a movie plays in the background. John is lying on top of him and Lafayette has both hands down his sweats. One is wrapped around his cock, and the other is resting on his ass, the pad of his middle finger offering steady pressure, rubbing against his hole. 

They could turn off the tv, take this to the bedroom, and take off each other’s clothes; Lafayette could lie back on the bed and finger John until he’s wet and open, and John could ride him until they both come. He wants that, but he’s also content to lie here and let John thrust into his hand. 

They go on kissing and touching one another until both of their sweatpants are down around their ankles and John is full of grinding against him. It’s a little too dry but it feels incredible, John’s weight against him, the stiff lengths of their cocks rubbing together. John’s eyes are closed as he rocks in Lafayette’s lap, quiet curses slipping out every so often. Lafayette rubs at his back, squeezes his ass, licks into his mouth, when John is coherent enough for it. 

“Oh, god, I want you to fuck me so bad,” John rasps against his mouth before kissing him hard. 

“Let’s go to the bedroom—“

“No, here. Right now. Fuck.”

John shifts up and reaches for Lafayette’s cock, pushing it back until it’s riding the crack of his ass. 

“John,” Lafayette chokes. “Love, we need—I cannot, like this.” 

John kisses him again, grinding back onto his cock while he holds it against his ass with his own hand. 

“I want it like this. I want it now. I want you in me.”

“John, I cannot,” Lafayette gasps, shaking his head against the cushion. The thought of pushing up into John and fucking him raw until they both come crushes the breath from his lungs like a physical weight on his chest. “Please,” he begs, “Jacky, please.”

John is on his knees, rubbing the head of Lafayette’s cock against his hole; he is leaking, spurts of precome wetting John’s skin, so much so that he thinks he could. He _could_ push into John like this, he’s getting them so wet. He grips John’s ass in both hands and spreads his cheeks, thrusting up against him a few times before he pushes his finger in instead. 

John cries out for it, bracing himself against the armrest above Lafayette’s head. His finger is a little too dry for this, but John rides it all the same. He guides John down into a kiss, and then lowers him with the same hand at the small of his back, until they’re rutting against one another like teenagers. They come like that, spilling together between their bellies, with Lafayette’s finger in his ass, and John panting against his throat.

“If that was a test, it was not a very nice one,” Lafayette tells him, once he has found his words in English again.

John has gone still against him, but he shakes his head and doesn’t say a word. Lafayette holds him until they’re sticking together and chilled from their cooling sweat.

 

\--

 

John showers first, while Lafayette locks up the apartment and cleans up a little, tossing their clothes into the laundry bag, and turning out the lights. He’s half afraid that John won’t be there when he gets out of the shower, but John is in bed, the sheet pulled up to his waist, and the rest of the blankets pushed to the foot of the bed. Lafayette leaves his wet towel on the floor and pulls on a clean pair of boxer-briefs, before he lifts the sheet and slides in beside him. 

Lafayette knows he’s going to have to speak first, but he’s unsure of where to start. He knows what just happened was the sort of self-destructive behavior John doesn’t fight much against when it surfaces, but he also knows that John is trying to get closer to him without knowing how.

He settles his hand on John’s cheek and strokes his thumb against his barely-there stubble. John’s eyes flick up to meet his in the relative dark of the room. 

“I will get tested,” he says quietly. “I must know that I am… I must be sure, first. You too, yes?”

John nods against the pillow, and to Lafayette’s relief, he doesn’t look angry or suspicious about the hesitation. He shifts closer and Lafayette puts his arm around him, even though it’s a little too hot to sleep pressed this close together. He kisses John’s forehead and lets it linger. 

“I will go tomorrow.”

“Me too,” John whispers, tipping his head up to kiss Lafayette on the lips. 

“I would always see you safe, John,” Lafayette tells him, stroking his damp hair back.

John doesn’t respond, but he fits his arm under Lafayette’s and pulls him impossibly closer, slotting their legs together. 

 

\--

 

John breaks his lease and moves into Lafayette’s Tribeca Park apartment on the first day of August. Some of his things go into storage, a lot of them are donated, and most of what John already cares about is already at Lafayette’s place, having made himself at home over the past couple of months. It doesn’t take long, not with Hercules helping (Alexander mostly lies around and complains about manual labor). 

The four of them go out for dinner at the end of the afternoon (Lafayette’s treat), and later, John lets him tweet a picture of their feet kicked up on the coffee table.

> _**MdLafayette:** .@JLaurens1028, my love!!! He is moved in♥ J’aime New York!_

John’s twitter is private but he likes the tweet and tosses his phone away as the follow requests start pouring in. Lafayette settles his arm around his shoulders and closes his eyes.

“My dad might see that,” John says after a while.

Lafayette shrugs. “He can know that I love you.”

“Just like that, huh?” John asks, his voice quiet.

Lafayette rubs at his bicep and knocks their feet together on the table. “Just like that, mon cher.” Then, “We should, how you say? Christen? Christen the apartment.”

John snorts a laugh. “I think we’ve had sex on every available surface in this apartment, Gil, but I’m not opposed to it happening again.”

“Yes, yes, but that was _before_ you were my live-in boyfriend. It would be different now.” 

John sits up more and looks at him, smile flirting around his mouth. “Oh would it?”

“Oui,” Lafayette grins, leaning in to peck him on the lips repeatedly. “It would be much better. Much, much better.”

John is still laughing into Lafayette’s mouth when he rolls them onto the floor. It’s as good a place as any to start, Lafayette figures.

 

\--

 

Lafayette tries not to eavesdrop on John’s phone calls with his father, but it’s become increasingly more difficult since he moved in. They almost always end in shouting (and too often, in tears), and Lafayette can’t hide himself away from it, so he just does his best not to listen.

“That’s not fair,” he can hear John saying as he paces the length of the hallway between their bedroom and the living room. Lafayette scrolls his instagram feed and likes pictures without really looking at them.

John heaves a sigh and his footsteps stop. “Daddy, please,” he says, so quietly, it makes Lafayette’s heart ache. “You’d like him if you…” a pause, “well then let him come and you can meet him!” John’s voice quickly raises to a frantic shout. “You let James’s girlfriend come, last time,” he spits.

Lafayette sets his phone down and pads into the hallway. John is grinding his fist against the wall, rubbing his knuckle raw, and not far off from hurling his phone again, he knows. He doesn’t look up when Lafayette takes his wrist and pulls his hand away, leaving a small spot of blood behind on the drywall. 

“Say goodbye, Jacky,” Lafayette tells him quietly, and John finally looks up at him. That familiar, lost look is there again and he hates it.

“I gotta go, dad,” John finally says, voice quiet and miserable. Lafayette hears John’s father say something and John shrugs. “I don’t know. I don’t want to come. I don’t want _you_ to come. Just stay home.”

Lafayette can hear John’s name, loud and clear, from the speaker, before he ends the call; he takes the phone from John, just in case, and tucks it into his own pocket. John doesn’t need any encouragement to sink into his hold. He rubs John’s back and holds him up until John straightens himself and speaks.

“He comes every year for my birthday. He does it with all of us, all of my siblings. If they’re dating anyone, they get to come along too.” John can’t seem to lift his gaze beyond his own ragged knuckle. “He says you can’t come. One guess as to why.”

This is a game Lafayette has never had to play before, and one he doesn’t quite know all of the rules to. He doesn’t know Henry Laurens at all, except from what John has told him. While most of it is negative — the homophobic inclinations, the way he treats John differently than his siblings, the screaming matches on the phone over every single thing he does in his life — he does think that John’s father still loves him. He can’t say for sure, of course, but his father does call to check on him often, pays for his tuition and housing (even though John will benefit from his deceased mother’s trust fund for, likely, his entire life). And, of course, John himself has said that his father has come around from all-out rejection, to where they are now. It’s a work in progress, but as long as Henry is still actively trying, then Lafayette will keep his mouth shut for John’s sake.

He still doesn’t know what to do or say to make John feel better about it, though. 

“You can go without me, love,” he says. “I do not mind if you do.”

“I mind,” John says. “I mind a lot. It’s not fair.”

Lafayette cards his fingers through John’s hair. He feels at a loss when he says, “I know, Jacky.”

 

\--

 

That evening, Lafayette sends an email to John’s father, the first communication that has ever passed between the two of them, and tells him that he will be taking John out for his birthday and that his presence is no longer required. He ends it with a scathing, _I will take care for John’s happiness where you have failed_ , and signs it with his full name, title included.

The following morning, Henry calls and speaks to John briefly. There is no fighting, no yelling, no phone throwing. John comes and finds him at the table, reading a job offer forwarded to him by his agent. He pulls Lafayette’s chair out and drops down on his lap, turning his face into his neck. Lafayette puts an arm around him and taps out his response one handed.

“Thank you,” John says, once Lafayette has hit send.

Lafayette pats John’s stomach. “I need no thanks, mon amour.” 

 

\--

 

Strangely enough, it’s not even one of Lafayette’s friends who sends him the ridiculous paparazzi photos of himself and John engaged in a rather private kiss. Alexander is the one to forward it to him with a series of question marks following the link. The page it leads to is a French gossip site that Lafayette is unfortunately well acquainted with. Several nude photos of him had been taken from an early photo shoot and flaunted around that corner of the internet for a while (not that he minded, or he wouldn’t have done a stint of nude modeling for visual arts students), but it was still annoying.

Now, it’s him and John, his poor John, whose father already tells him not to be loud about who he is, they’re talking about. He can’t believe these photos were worth taking, let alone selling, but still, they’re there. Again, Lafayette’s twitter follower count rises by the thousands, and it only means more job offers for him, but he fears John’s reaction.

“These angles are incredibly unflattering,” John says, tapping on the picture to bring it up larger. “I have a double chin.”

Lafayette moves the picture down to where both of his hands are squeezing John’s ass, even though only one of them is visible. “It’s very classy, though, no?”

John gives him a sideways look, eyes narrowed and lips pursed, but he shakes his head with a grin. “Is being with you always going to be this level of ridiculous?” he asks after a moment, locking and setting his phone down.

Lafayette shrugs. “Probably.”

John studies his face for a moment before he leans in to kiss him. When he eases back, he strokes his fingertips over Lafayette’s bearded cheek. “I hope so.”

 

\--

> **MdLafayette:** home :)

**Author's Note:**

> Comments and kudos are loved and appreciated.


End file.
